I see VCs and successful entrepreneurs promoting the JOBS Act, a bill with a confusing name. It doesn't seem to be about creating jobs, or that isn't the reason the investors like it. What it does is make it easy for startups to sell their stock to the public.

If you were a very trusting individual, you'd think -- what could be wrong with that? Everyone knows that investments are risky propositions. You could win big or lose everything, or somewhere inbetween. And if you could guarantee that every investment was legit, there would be nothing wrong with it.

But when you take all the regulations off public offerings, the same thingthathappened in the unregulated financial services market in the lead-up to the crash of 2008, seems likely will happen in tech. Unscrupulous people posing as bankers ripped off a lot of ordinary people. People assumed that someone was covering their back, and no one was. And when the bottom dropped out, a lot of people were left bankrupt and homeless.

That whole mess was the result of the assumption that all the regulations established after the crash of 1929 were misguided, unnecessary, socialist, wimpy or whatever. In the lead-up to that crash everyone was betting on stocks, the same way they will be if this law passes. Everyone assumed stocks could do nothing but go up. Sound familiar? Yeah, that's what everyone thought about real estate, not that long ago.

I assume the investors of 2012 who are pushing for this law are well-intentioned people who are just unaware of history, or optimists about human nature. But we've been through this before, very recently. We should not have to go through it again.